Stuff Wot I've Dun...
I've dicked around for decades making gadgets and odds and ends, probably the most interesting are as follows...

When I was around 12, I made a hand-cranked phonograph from a long nut-&-bolt I found, some bits of wood, a yogurt carton, a balloon, and a needle. I made recording cylinders from candle wax, melting the candles on our gas cooker - the first time I just chucked the wax into a saucepan and put it straight on the hob, whereupon after a few minutes the liquified wax burst into flames. Cue a brief bollocking off mum, who then showed me how to melt the wax safely in an improvised bain-marie. It actually worked, bellowing into a paper horn produced just about audible recordings which wore out after being played a few times. No photos, sadly, it was thirty years ago...

More recently, I used to run a (now defunct) spoof news website with a mate of mine, which I was very proud of.

Even more recently, I've been experimenting with a high-speed video camera shooting miniature pyrotechnics - you can see an example here: youtu.be/BYUx8eVUe24

Last year, I made a life-size Spitting Image style puppet head of Nick Griffin - I was going to make a spoof BNP party political broadcast before the general election, but it took too long to make the puppet, the election came and went and the BNP was consigned to the dustbin of history. The head now sits atop a full-size body in my lounge, where it startles the shite out of unsuspecting visitors (such as my mum recently):

Spoilt Students
Around 1999 I was a mature student in London on my way home with a flatmate on a night bus. We were on the upper deck near the front, and in front of us right by the big windsreen were some young students. All the gobbiest one whittered on about was what car his mummy and daddy were getting for him, and how he hoped it wasn't going to be such-&-such a model or whatever colour.

So I grabbed him by the head and smashed him through the window in such a way he fell into the road directly in front of the bus, his head bursting like an over-ripe melon filled with ketchup as the front wheel went over him, his ribcage splintering like an over-cooked rack of lamb and his legs splaying out behind like an over-done spatchcock chicken left out in the sun for too long. Or something.
(Fri 2nd Mar 2012, 10:37, More)

The Titanic Conspiracy Theory
I'm not sure I'd say this is my favourite conspiracy theory, as conspiracy theories generally get right on my tits, but as they go it's superficially plausible but completely insane: the Titanic Conspiracy Theory (Titanic as in the famous iceberg-beleagured ocean liner, not as in, "This is a really big conspiracy theory, so big that Huge, Colossal or Gigantic Conspiracy Theory just don't cut it - I know, let's call it the Titanic Conspiracy Theory!"; neither is it anything to do with James Cameron or Lew Grade).

The Titanic was the second vessel in a class of three virtually identical ocean liners, the first in service being the Olympic. In late 1911, the Olympic was involved in an apparently minor collision with a Royal Navy light cruiser, HMS Hawke. The Olympic was withdrawn from service for repairs, which was a financial disaster for her owners, the White Star Line, because not only was Olympic thus not collecting passenger revenue but the completion of the Titanic, still on the stocks, was being delayed because resources were diverted to repairing the Olympic. To make matters worse, a Royal Navy inquiry exonerated HMS Hawke of any blame (almost certainly wrongly), so the likelihood of the White Star Line collecting a fat insurance payout was remote.

The conspiracy goes that the White Star Line secretly switched the Olympic (which had suffered far worse damage than admitted to) and Titanic around during the Olympic's repairs, and planned to sink the damaged Olympic, now re-named Titanic, during her 'maiden' transatlantic voyage, thereby ridding themselves of a damaged liability and collecting on the insurance. There were supposed to be other ships nearby which would rescue all the passengers and crew, but for various reasons it all went tits-up resulting in the disaster we all know and love...

For a number of reasons this theory is, of course, completely fucking bonkers.
(Thu 1st Dec 2011, 15:57, More)

Ages ago...
...I made a lifesize caricature puppet head of Nick Griffin and did some mini-pyro tests for a film, both of which are described in this old b3ta thread, so I won't go in to any more detail here:www.b3ta.com/questions/amazingprojects/post1439494

More recently, I made a small caricature head of Seb Coe intended for some stopmotion animation tests, but I wasn't happy with the way it turned out, so I'm doing more work on other subjects:

And in the last week I've built a phonograph cylinder shaving machine (you use it to smooth off blank wax phonograph cylinders for recording on) and a cutting stylus made from glass for an Edison phonograph recording head:
The reason there are all those labels on the photos, which will mean fuck-all to people here, is that I put those images together earlier as information for someone else who wants to have a crack at recording on wax.

And with those I've been experimenting with recording on wax cylinders using an Edison phonograph:youtu.be/2Nz-V208ux4
(Mon 15th Oct 2012, 1:31, More)

Young People Can't Afford Cars
Getting right on my tits recently was the flurry of 'news' stories wringing their hands over the fact that students can no longer afford cars and are having to resort to - shock horror - public transport to get around as if this was somehow an infringement of their human rights.